French Roast Studios A robust blend of game development and independence.

I need to brush up on what’s required when submitting to the iOS and Play Stores, so I thought I’d make a quick flappy bird game which features micropurchases and ads. I thought I’d use this opportunity to flex my muscles on character animation in Unity, as well. My daughter was eager to be involved, so she and possibly her cousins will be the hero characters.

Here’s to the first week of development on TigerHawks! I’m getting back into 3D modeling and texturing, so I thought I’d cook up a quick reference fighter to use as FPO. Here are some step by step images of doing so. Next step, sticking it into Unity and hooking it up to the controller.

Wireframe model

Texture mapping

Textures!

It’s been pretty quiet on here since I got a job as a Level 3 Support Engineer over at Resolve Systems, but I’ve decided to return to doing what I enjoy the most. Game Development! One of the roadblocks to doing this stuff full time has always been a lack of income. Games are long and complicated projects, and it goes without saying that time is money.

I have a wife and two kids to consider when weighing these decisions. So, in an effort to put an income stream behind the development of my personal projects, I’ve decided to start a Patreon account for French Roast Studios. For those that don’t know what Patreon is, it’s a site which helps developers, like myself, find income from those who like what we do. You can opt into a monthly donation of your choice, and depending on your level of patronage, you’ll receive certain perks that other patrons don’t.

If you’re interested in supporting me, please visit my Patreon account and offer what you can! Thank you to all of those who support me, and I’m looking forward to starting this adventure with you all!

Sorry about the bad mic quality. A new headset mic is on my shortlist. In today’s alpha video, we get to see the following new features:

Wingman Plane

The wingman plane is a friendly plane that follows you in formation. Right now, he just moves to match your current vector while flying close, top right of your current position. I’ll add in the ability for the wingman to find a position relative to the player’s current rotation, so we can have multiple wingmen flanking your sides and flying behind you. These wingmen can also follow other wingmen, so I can mess around with setting up cool attack formations. Fun stuff!

Aggressive Enemy Plane

Now the enemy plane will try and hunt you down. He’ll do his best to fly directly behind you at a certain distance which correlates to whether he wants to lock missiles from afar or pepper you with bullets from up close. At first, he was tenacious and could NOT be tracked for missile lock, so I added the ability to confuse your opponent by flying too close and breaking off. This makes him wander aimlessly while he tries to ‘find’ you, giving you plenty of time to swoop in from behind and…

Missile lock and FIRE!

Heat seeker missiles have been added. You now press the right thumbstick to activate the target reticle. If you can get it to hover over a particular enemy, missile lock occurs and heat seekers will use it seek and destroy your target. AWESOME!

Object pools for all projectiles and particles

It is INCREDIBLY important to watch your memory and complexity in game, especially for weaker platforms like the OUYA and older mobile phones. So I’ve implemented object pools for all bullets, missiles, and particles that will keep memory consumption constant. Now the screen can me filled with hundreds of bullets with no ill effects on frame rate.

Particles

It’s not much to look at right now, but the game now supports animated particles. I’ll have to MAKE some awesome effects to stress test it, but expect to see a lot of cool stuff. Smoke from damaged planes, shrapnel and fire from missile/bullet strikes, clouds, birds, etc.

As you can see, you can play as a Player Plane against a single Enemy Plane. The plane will roll depending on which direction you’re turning. The enemy plane AI is just on a random, dumb algorithm that makes him change speed and direction every couple of seconds. The Player Plane is fully controllable by both an Xbox360 GamePad and and OUYA gamepad. It also builds perfectly to the OUYA device, and plays at a beautiful 60 FPS. You’re capable of firing a handful of weapons, such as 3 different machine guns and a dumb-fire missile.

I’m VERY pleased with how well this build is going, and how well Starling is performing on both PC and the OUYA, which is arguably a moderately powered Android device. Keep an eye out for more updates in the future.

Here are a couple of assets for the hero and enemy planes. I needed full turn-arounds to really give the player a wild ride when it comes to evading missiles, performing evasive maneuvers, and crash diving after being destroyed. There was a short time when I considered building this game in 3D, but I like the 2D look. I feel that it lends a little more soul to the game.

I now have initial build installing to PC, Android, OUYA and iOS. I’ll be using the Citrus engine to better handle asset management and Stage3D rendering. If Beards and Glory taught me anything, it’s that reinventing the wheel can be a colossal waste of time. Gamepad support is enabled on PC and OUYA, but Android and iOS will have the option of using controller overlays on screen. Not my favorite thing in the world, but what are you going to do… that’s the hell of building for touchscreen. Keep and eye open over the next few weeks for some rudimentary gameplay. This is all so exciting.